Lake Billy Chinook 3-25-05

I had the pleasure of taking Steve Cramer and wife Irma from Gresham, Or. for a half day trip this past Friday. Steve has a fisheries consulting business and has a lot of interest in this specific fishery. Their grandson Chris was along for their spring break vacation.

When I left Bend in the early a.m., the ice was horrible and it made for slow going on the way to Round Butte. Luckily, it warmed up by 10 degrees from Bend to the lake and there was no snow or ice to contend with at the ramp.

We headed up to the island immediately since that had been producing fish for me all week long. We started off of a point were I had marked fish as we lined up for a favorite run. Sure enough a nice bull slammed our Rapala J-13 the first 100 hundred yards we fished. It was a fish of about 3 lb. I turned around and we hit another within 5 minutes of the same size. Believing the old adage "Don't leave fish to look for fish," we started back through the same area until we had 4 fish to the boat before the first hour was up. What a great start to the day.......nothing big, but plenty of action. Chris was having a ball playing most of the fish.

The weather had been rain/snow most of the week but we got a break that morning and we only had scattered clouds with little or light wind. Water temps are slowly rising to the high 40's and most of the fish we are catching are coming from shallower water. We have been not been doing as well on the downriggers of late and that is probably because the kokanee are up and very scattered right now.

We fished until 1:30 p.m. so that they could get a little rock exploring in as well that day. With 8 fish landed and one 6 lb. bull harvested for the grill, everyone seemed pleased with the results that day. Chris was "proud as punch" as he drug that bull up the ramp for grandpa to clean.

Next trip will be this coming Wed. the 30th when PGE biologist, Scott Lewis and I get out for half a day on the water. I'm looking forward to meeting Scott in person and spending some time with him.

Screamin' Drags, Rick